


Some Old Ghosts That We Grew Attached To

by vargrimar



Series: The Chambers and the Valves [23]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Pre-Relationship, and sherlock has an internal crisis, in which john and sherlock watch mary's new dvd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23018362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vargrimar/pseuds/vargrimar
Summary: Sherlock digs his nails into the soft whorl of each thumb and breathes. He breathes and breathes andbreathes, a buoyant pressure plucking him up by the sternum, and he knows without question that right now, right here, trapped like a blood sample between the slides of this one single moment in John’s sitting room, he has never felt more unbalanced.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Chambers and the Valves [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640680
Comments: 10
Kudos: 87





	Some Old Ghosts That We Grew Attached To

**Author's Note:**

> ( this brilliant light is brighter than we’ve known  
> without our darkness to prove it so
> 
> still, we can’t help but to examine it,  
> to add our question marks to periods )

_MISS YOU_ is such an eyecatcher, he thinks; of course she would have written it.

“Came with today’s post,” says John, turning the little disk sleeve about between his fingers. “It’s got to be her. It’s got to be. When you got yours, it had ‘miss me’ written on the front, right? Like Moriarty?”

“It had, yes. It was worded that way specifically to catch my attention. She knew I’d find it.” Sherlock takes the transparent sleeve between a thumb and forefinger. He flips it over and inspects the perfectly ordinary capitals printed on the front of the disk. “Did this come in an envelope?”

“Erm, yeah, it did,” says John, “but there wasn’t anything special about it. Just your average parcel. No interesting markings, no handwriting. No return address, either. Already checked.”

“Just like the last one. Another dead man’s switch, no doubt.” Sherlock offers it back. “Have you watched it?”

“Not yet. Wanted to wait ‘til you got here.” John tilts his head toward the telly. “Got a minute?”

Sherlock nods.

As John accepts the disk and crosses the clean expanse of his sitting room to kneel in front of the DVD player, Sherlock steps out from the small foyer under the stairs and takes position by the sofa. He elects to remain standing, clasping his hands together behind his back, the very portrait of patience to belie the fact that he waits on tenterhooks.

Idly, he wonders just how many of these disks Mary had prepared. It has been two so far, two delivered at strangely opportune times, which means there were two events Mary predicted successfully, even if by chance. And if two disks were already set up to be delivered in this particular fashion, set up with whatever sort of pending live-conditions they had that would eventually set them loose into the world, who’s to say there aren’t more? 

Might they expect another parcel in a year from now? he wonders. Two years? Five years? Ten? Mary was incredibly clever; he wouldn’t be surprised at all if there were dozens more live-conditions waiting to fail. The likelihood, he must admit, is rather high.

And if he’s honest, he wouldn’t really mind. More videos, that is. More dead man’s switches delivering more pre-recorded disks. Hearing her voice might pick at the fossil of guilt still earthed deep within the vault of his chest, but he still misses her, remembers her, and having her check in once in a while, even in the posthumous form of a DVD…

Well.

It could be good.

John crosses the sitting room once more with the remote in hand. He sits down on the furthermost side of the sofa, letting his elbows come to rest on his parted knees, and there is an anxious sort of heaviness there, thinks Sherlock; it clutches at his shoulders, his hands, evident in his gentle slouch and in the short exhale rushed from his lungs.

A second of stillness passes, and then John seems to feel the quiet press of Sherlock’s gaze. He meets it with a turn of his head.

This time, there are no chemically treated currents to fill the ravine between them. There is no chlorine, no rhythm of lapping water, no danger lurking somewhere in their peripheries, but Sherlock understands the words all the same, the words spoken by gesture and posture and countenance alone, a question flickering in blue: _Are you ready?_

The reply comes easily, comes readily, comes only as it ever has: _Always_.

Sherlock looks away, the insistent prickle of eye contact almost too much to bear. At the edge of his vision, John switches on the telly and sets the remote down on the coffee table.

The screen switches from black to Mary. She looks just as Sherlock remembers: heart-shaped face, dyed-blond hair, eyes like watery slate, mouth turned upon the twist of a knowing smile. He notes the wry gleam in her eye as she stares at the camera, a gleam that is so familiar, so quintessentially Mary, and it does something strange to the fossil in his chest.

Hello again, he thinks. Been a while, hasn’t it?

Mary doesn’t answer, of course. Can’t answer, can’t ever do again, but it’s almost as if she could. These precious few minutes of her wit and charm have been well preserved; her presence seems so achingly real despite the fact that this is a mere shade of the woman who once was.

“P.S.,” she begins, always with that knowing smile, “I know you two. And if I’m gone, I know what you could become.”

As she talks, adrenaline snaps, electric, through Sherlock’s bloodstream.

Everything is suddenly cold and it feels like he’s been plunged into a vat of ice water somewhere mid-breath so the chill draws through his nose, down his throat, and bursts straight into his lungs. His entire respiratory system hitches and the way his pulse surges mightily against his inner wrists screams fight-or-flight, a response that should never exist within the context of him and John alone together in any sitting room, and yet here it is in all its horrendous glory with its rabbit-swift heart and hormone deluge that inundates every possible cell, cross-linked scar tissues and all.

He briefly glances from the screen to John because he can’t (won’t) help himself.

John sits there on the sofa, wholly rapt. His eyes are fixed on the telly, his hands laced together in a tight seam, the rest of him so still and unmoving as if he were too afraid to breathe. A faint smile surfaces in a twitch at the very side of his mouth, something so transient and brief that Sherlock almost thinks he’s imagining it, and then it’s lost in the continued lilt of Mary’s message, _a junkie who solves crimes to get high_ and _a doctor who never came home from the war_.

The rest of it all seems to bleed together. Sherlock’s brain feels like it’s buzzing underneath his skull and her words clamber together in a haphazard mesh that catches sharply in the depths of his chest like Texidor’s twinge. Her voice is so familiar, familiar in a way that borders on painful, and he knows she may be talking from static data written into the surface of a compact disk but if he closes his eyes, closes them even for the smallest moment, it’s almost like she’s standing right here with the two of them.

Sherlock rubs his thumb and forefinger together. Back and forth, back and forth, he creates a comforting cadence to stay the furious upheaval that writhes through too many webs of oversensitive nerves. He keeps his eyes fixed on Mary’s forehead, keeps his back straight and shoulders squared. He knows John watches her with equal attention, but he dares not look. Not now. Not now. He can’t. Please.

_I know you two. And if I’m gone, I know what you could become._

Mary was so very clever, he thinks. Could she really have seen? He’d been careful, so incredibly careful, but she was an assassin and a wife and a mother and a friend; she was sharp, perceptive, and she knew things at a glance. Between the masks and the marble and the forced indifference, could she have seen the hairline cracks, the barely kept together fissures; could she have seen it all for the farce it truly was?

And if she had. If she had. If, if, _if_ —

Sherlock digs his nails into the soft whorl of each thumb and breathes. He breathes and breathes and _breathes_ , a buoyant pressure plucking him up by the sternum, and he knows without question that right now, right here, trapped like a blood sample between the slides of this one single moment in John’s sitting room, he has never felt more unbalanced.

Mary smiles at the camera, smiles at him, smiles at _them_ , and there’s that precordial catch again, deep and sharp in his chest, a needle finding its vein before the screen goes abruptly black.

What does that mean? he desperately wants to ask. What kind of message is that—‘what we could become’? How am I supposed to construe that? What is that supposed to _mean_?

But Mary is static data written into the surface of a compact disk and John is on the sofa rubbing at the corner of one damp eye and Sherlock can only stand there by his side in petrified silence.

There is no one left to ask.


End file.
